Introducing the Google Cloud Storage BLOB Provider

ABP provides a BLOB Storing System, which allows you to work with BLOBs. This system is typically used to store file contents in a project and read these file contents when they are needed. Since ABP provides an abstraction to work with BLOBs, it also provides some pre-built storage providers such as Azure, Aws and Aliyun.

Recently, I worked on Google Cloud Storage and wanted to create a new storage provider: BlobStoring.Providers.GoogleCloudStorage

Google Cloud Storage Provider works seamlessly with ABP's BLOB Storing System and allows you to store BLOBS in Google Cloud Storage.

In this article, I will show you how you can use this provider as the blob storage provider. Let's get started :)

Note: Please be aware that in this article I will only cover how to configure containers to use Google Cloud Storage as the storage provider and I will not mention about the BLOB Storing System of ABP.

Installation & Configuration Steps

You typically need to apply the following four steps to configure Google Cloud Storage as the BLOB storage provider:

  1. First, you need to install the package and configure it:
  • Open a command line (terminal) in the directory of the .csproj file you want to add the BlobStoring.Providers.GoogleCloudStorage package and run the following command:
dotnet add package BlobStoring.Providers.GoogleCloudStorage --version 1.0.0
  • Then, add the following DependsOn statement in the module class of your project:
using Volo.Abp.BlobStoring.Gcp;
//...

[DependsOn(typeof(AbpBlobStoringGcpModule))]
public class NewAcmeWebModule : AbpModule
{
        //...
}
  1. After installing and configuring the package, you should create a service account key (it's needed to connect with Google Cloud Storage):

Here are the documents you need to check to create a service account key:

We need to create a service account key to obtain credentials to connect with Google Cloud Storage. When you select to create a service account key in the keys section, a .JSON file will be downloaded along with all related info (such as clientEmailAddress, privateKey, and projectId).

Alternatively, you can follow the interactive tutorial on the Google Cloud Storage website. Here are the complete steps you need to do (from the interactive tutorial):

  1. After you follow these instructions, then you can configure the GoogleCloudStorageBlobOptions with these values in the ConfigureServices method of your module class:
Configure<GoogleCloudStorageBlobOptions>(options =>
{
    options.ProjectId = "<project-id>";
    options.ClientEmail = "<client-email>";
    options.PrivateKey = "<private-key>";
});

Note: PrivateKey starts with '-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----' and ends with '-----END PRIVATE KEY-----' placeholders.

  1. After specified credentials, you can finally configure the AbpBlobStoringOptions in the ConfigureServices method of your module class and directly use the Blob Storage system of ABP:
        Configure<AbpBlobStoringOptions>(options =>
        {
            options.Containers.ConfigureDefault(container =>
            {
                container.UseGoogleCloudStorage();
            });
        });

IBlobContainer (and IBlobContainer<TContainer>) is the main interface to store and read BLOBs. You can refer to ABP's Blob Storing document for more info: https://abp.io/docs/latest/framework/infrastructure/blob-storing

You can see the simple code block below for a simple usage demonstration:

        [AllowAnonymous]
        public virtual async Task<IRemoteStreamContent> GetFileAsync(GetFileInput input)
        {
            var fileDescriptor = await _appFileDescriptorRepository.GetAsync(input.FileId);

            //get the file as stream
            var stream = await _blobContainer.GetAsync(fileDescriptor.Id.ToString("N"));

            //return the stream with the mime-type/content-type
            return new RemoteStreamContent(stream, fileDescriptor.Name, fileDescriptor.MimeType);
        }

        public virtual async Task<AppFileDescriptorDto> UploadFileAsync(IRemoteStreamContent input)
        {
            var id = GuidGenerator.Create();
            var fileDescriptor = await _appFileDescriptorRepository.InsertAsync(new AppFileDescriptors.AppFileDescriptor(id, input.FileName, input.ContentType));

            //Upload file with a unique blob name
            await _blobContainer.SaveAsync(fileDescriptor.Id.ToString("N"), input.GetStream());

            return ObjectMapper.Map<AppFileDescriptors.AppFileDescriptor, AppFileDescriptorDto>(fileDescriptor);
        }

Demo

Here is a gif that shows the BLOB Storing System (with BlobStoring.Providers.GoogleCloudStorage) in action:

Google Cloud Storage Dashboard

When a new BLOB is trying to be uploaded, the provider first creates the bucket (container) and uploads the file into that bucket.

For the example above, here are the bucket details:

You can list, get, and download all files in this bucket in the Google Cloud dashboard:

Conclusion

In this article, I showed you how to configure Google Cloud Storage as the blob storage provider. This provider works seamlessly with ABP's BLOB Storing System and if you apply the steps correctly, then you can directly start using it.

Thanks for reading :)
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